The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams

  Eventually Leilah nodded; Aleisha allowed herself a deep exhale. Feeling thoroughly exposed, she cleared her throat and began. Leilah didn’t take her eyes off her daughter.

  ‘Wait,’ Leilah said, after Aleisha had been reading for ten minutes. ‘I’ve missed something. What’s this about?’

  Aleisha stopped. She hadn’t expected her mum to follow the story. She’d just been expecting her to listen, letting the words wash over her. ‘Erm … well it’s about this boy, Pi Patel …’ Whenever Aleisha thought of Pi, she imagined a young Mr P, with a thicker head of hair, but the same beaming, smiling face. ‘He’s just escaped a shipwreck that was transporting his whole family and their zoo animals to Canada. Now he’s stuck on a boat with a tiger and some other animals … in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.’

  ‘What the … that’s not likely, is it?’

  ‘Er, probably not. But I think that’s kind of the whole point of the book – like truth, and what’s true and what’s imagined.’

  ‘Ah, that’s clever,’ Leilah said. Aleisha smiled, suddenly shy, a tiny bit of pride creeping through her veins. ‘Okay. Who’s the Richard Parker he keeps going on about?’

  ‘Mum, that’s the tiger.’

  ‘Called Richard Parker?’ Leilah’s eyes were wide, disbelieving.

  ‘Yeah! A clerical error that stuck – it was actually the name of the person who captured the tiger, but the paperwork swapped their names round.’

  ‘Okay, I’m caught up – go on.’

  Aleisha continued, picking up with Pi leaning over the boat trying to catch some food, in a desperate attempt to feed Richard and keep himself alive. Pi was almost entirely alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but animals, a volatile tiger, for company. Aleisha tried to squash down the rise of a familiar feeling – the survival mode that kicked in every time she heard Leilah shout out at night. It was with a stab of guilt that she realized, yes, she knew a thing or two about volatility. Like Pi, Aleisha was constantly watching for a shift, a change, that could come at any moment. But on the other hand, the tiger, despite everything, was the one thing saving Pi from his own loneliness. When she looked up from the page, she saw that Leilah was in Pi’s world too, her eyes were focused on the ceiling, painting the images before her eyes. Aleisha wondered how Leilah’s artistic eye was visualizing this story. She pictured some of Leilah’s recent designs, the ones she did for herself, rather than for ad agencies, printed as postcards and stuck to the wall in her bedroom. Were the colours vibrant? The sea, a deep blue, the orange of the tiger bold, burning. And, Aleisha allowed herself to wonder, to Leilah, was she Pi, or the Tiger? Or no one at all?

  She put the book down for a moment, ‘Do you want a drink?’

  Leilah nodded. ‘Water, please. Cold as you can.’

  The water from the tap streamed into the glass; Aleisha stared straight ahead. She could see an outline of herself reflected in the tiles: her hair, pulled back into a bun on the top of her head. She looked like her mother, in the pictures from back when Leilah had still been married to Dean. Her smile then was ever-present, it seemed. But people always smiled for photos. From those pictures, she couldn’t ever really tell what was going on in her mum’s mind. She wondered if Dean ever knew either.

  She smacked some ice cubes out of the tray onto the countertop, before plonking, plinking them into each glass. ‘So loud, Aleisha!’ Leilah called from the other room.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Aleisha called back, wincing. The spell cast from the book was starting to wear away.

  Condensation was already forming on the outside of the glasses when she handed one to her mum. ‘Okay, Mum,’ Aleisha said softly, ‘I’m going to finish reading in my room. Will you be okay?’

  ‘No,’ Leilah said. ‘Sit next to me and read again.’ Her voice was hopeful, like a plea.

  ‘Okay,’ Aleisha collected her book, trying to keep the surprise from her face.

  They sat close to one another, but not too close. Her fingers trembled almost imperceptibly as she started to turn the pages once more.

  For a moment, Aleisha was a child again, curled up under the covers, resting against her mother who was holding a huge schoolbook open in front of them. The letters were large, and Aleisha formed the words timidly – one by one. Leilah would stroke her hair, kiss her forehead, every time she said something right, and if she got it wrong, she’d just whisper gently, ‘Do you want to try that again?’ Aidan would poke his head around the door and beam at his sister, a goofy gap between his front teeth. He stuck his thumb up and mouthed, exaggeratedly, ‘Good girl!’

  She remembered snuggling up with Leilah, the two of them falling asleep, and then young Aidan’s whispers rousing her: ‘Aleisha did loads of good reading,’ he’d say to Dean, a lisp muffling his words. ‘My little sister is so clever.’ Dean mumbled something and Aidan replied, ‘I love her millions.’ Aleisha had felt proud of herself then. She wished Aidan could see her now; she wanted to share this moment with him, to show him that she was finally getting through to Leilah. She knew Aidan had always been able to do that, but it was her chance to say to him, ‘I can help you out more, now, because I know what to do. I know how I can help.’

  By the time Aleisha had read another chapter – Pi had just ‘marked’ his territory in the lifeboat after five days at sea – Leilah and Aleisha were both laughing. When she finally started to read again, through cry-laughing eyes, her mother pulled her hand out from under her legs and placed it gently on Aleisha’s knee. Aleisha froze. Her every nerve stilled, a shot of ice piercing straight through her skin, her bone, and into the sofa. Aleisha placed her own hand gently on Leilah’s, and turned the page with the other.

  She kept reading, she heard the words of the story, but she didn’t take them in. The voice no longer felt like her own; she was alone, trapped inside her own body with no control. The only part of her body she belonged to was her hand, the hand connected to Leilah’s hand, connected to Aleisha’s knee, which didn’t feel like Aleisha’s knee at all.

  Leilah’s voice then. ‘The characters feel so alive. The animal, that tiger, it feels so … human.’

  ‘They do, don’t they?’

  ‘Who gave you this book?’ Leilah asked, stroking the cover.

  ‘The library.’

  ‘Who recommended it? I’ve never heard of it before.’

  ‘I found it on this,’ she pulled out the list from her phone, unfolded it, passed it to Leilah. Suddenly, to Leilah, it was the most precious thing in the world.

  ‘Oh, Aleisha! I remember Rebecca. I loved that book.’ Leilah ran her fingers over the words, lingering for a moment in the folds. ‘I read it in one day, when I was pregnant with you, actually. I couldn’t sleep. You never let me sleep. So I read this – it was perfect. Wow,’ was all she said for a moment. ‘Someone curated this list. It’s lovely. So simple. Who wrote it?’

  Aleisha shook her head. ‘It was just left in one of the books. I also found this – not in the same book though.’ She held up the chicken shop stamp card, her first thoughts on To Kill a Mockingbird scrawled in tiny handwriting on the back after Kyle had told her to ‘say something interesting’ to Mr P.

  ‘You’re going to keep reading them? The books?’

  Was she going to carry on? She’d felt so unsure at first – it had just been a tick-box exercise, so she’d have enough to say to pretend to Mr P that she knew all about books, that she was a good librarian. But Rebecca … it had scared her half to death. She could picture Manderley so clearly in her mind; the house itself, Rebecca’s room, left almost untouched. And then The Kite Runner. She’d never forget that book. And she thought of Atticus, his kick-ass lawyer skills, how much she admired him, even though he was literally made up. And, right now, she felt Leilah’s hand still resting on her knee as Pi and Richard Parker drifted across the ocean.

  ‘Yes,’ Aleisha said with conviction. ‘All of them. This is the fourth.’

  ‘Were the others good?’

  �
��Yeah.’ She wanted to say more, but she stopped herself. She thought of The Kite Runner – it was so sad, there was so much grief there, she was scared of how that might make Leilah feel.

  Leilah brought the piece of paper close to her face, squinting. ‘Could be a student, like a uni reading list or something?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘A Suitable Boy. Dean read that when we were on holiday once. He ended up using it as a doorstop. It’s fat. I don’t think he got very far.’

  She hadn’t heard her mother mention Dean in months; she hadn’t used his name in years. Usually it was ‘your dad’ or sometimes just ‘him’. But she laughed anyway. Of course, her dad would use a fat book as a doorstop.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘You must have been just five or six, we left you with his parents. We went on a cycling holiday. The first holiday, just us, in ages. It was nice, not having to look after you guys,’ Leilah paused. Aleisha frowned at her. ‘As much as we loved you, we could just be us for a little while again. He kept forgetting things in his saddle bags when we were at the villa, and every time he went to get one thing, he’d lock himself out. Finally, he caught on,’ Leilah smiled, ‘and stuck that bloody book there to keep the door open. But he’d only ever remember to bring one thing in at a time, so the door was almost permanently wedged open. He’s so forgetful.’

  After a moment, Leilah said, ‘Keep reading?’

  Aleisha continued, until the sunlight vanished from the room, and Leilah mentioned dinner, vaguely, noncommittally, before deciding instead that it was too late, it was time to go to bed. Aleisha should have fed Leilah. Aidan would be upset that she hadn’t. But for the first time since Leilah’s dark days, weeks and months had begun, she had let her daughter in, even if just for a moment. All thanks to a boy, a tiger, an orang-utan, a zebra and a hyena stuck on a boat.

  Leilah kissed Aleisha gently on her face and wandered upstairs without looking back. The book was still open in Aleisha’s hands, but she couldn’t read the words any longer. The plastic cover was hot and soft under her fingertips. She wanted to remember this moment, the warmth of it, and how a terrifyingly unpredictable tiger and a boy could create this magic beyond the pages. She didn’t want to think about whether this moment, this feeling, her own and Leilah’s, would last until the morning. She knew she might never recreate this moment again, but she hoped she could. She believed the book … and the list … they might bring her mother back to her.

  She collected the glass of water; Leilah hadn’t even taken a sip.

  THE READING LIST

  GIGI

  2018

  GIGI SPOTTED SAMUEL RUNNING up ahead. Her son loved supermarkets. He just ran, and ran, and ran. That’s why she always took him to the Tesco Express now, because there wasn’t so much space, it was harder to lose him.

  As Samuel charged into the shop, he ran past a man perusing his shopping list, and an unfortunate gust of wind from the automatic doors, combined with Samuel running at the speed of light, sent the piece of paper flying out of his hands. Samuel, spotting this opportunity to play a new game, followed the piece of paper, dodging through people’s feet, ducking and diving around mini-trolleys and baskets.

  Eventually, Gigi caught up with him in the fruit aisle, where she spotted his little fingers reaching for the grapes – his new favourite. A week ago, she’d have had to smash grapes up with a banana or something before he’d touch them.

  She knew he’d lost interest in the shopping list, wherever it was. He loved rummaging in the fruit at the moment. He’d pick something up and show her, then name it, confidently. Mostly he was right, ‘nana’ and ‘gwape’, but often he was wrong with the trickier fruit – mango was often ‘apple’, pineapple was ‘bababa’ which was his made-up word for ‘I have not a fricking clue’, and orange was ‘ball’. But she so loved watching him change, watching him turn into a little person.

  She tried to get to him before his sticky fingers made contact. As she approached, she noticed his hand wasn’t going for the ‘gwape’ but for a piece of paper tucked under them. The man’s shopping list. He pulled it out and started waving it, triumphant, looking around for applause from his fellow shoppers.

  She grabbed it gently so he wouldn’t start wailing about having been ‘fiefted’. ‘Samuel,’ she said calmly. ‘We should return this to the man it belongs to.’

  She looked down at the list and frowned. It wasn’t a shopping list after all. It was a book list, a film list, or something like that.

  She held Samuel’s hand in one of hers, and wandered towards the front entrance, hoping to find the man again. He was nowhere to be seen. She hurried around the shop once, with no clue what he really looked like.

  After a minute or so, Samuel grew restless. ‘Mummy, slow down, slow down!’ Gigi gave in. The best place for this list would be on the community board, which was right next to the spot where the man had been standing, in case he came back to find it. She placed it gently on one of the sticky pads, face up. Maybe he wouldn’t mind that it was gone – she imagined he’d got the list on his phone or something anyway – everyone did these days. She looked at it one last time, trying to work out why someone had been perusing this kind of list in a supermarket.

  To Kill a Mockingbird – that was one of those black-and-white films, wasn’t it? Based on a classic book.

  The Kite Runner. This was another film that she’d seen with her ex, at the point they’d been close to breaking up. It was really way too much of an emotional film to see with someone you weren’t totally comfortable around any more. She’d tried to hide her ugly crying but had ended up giving herself hiccups – twice as embarrassing.

  Pride and Prejudice – also a classic book-turned-film; she’d watched it with her mum because her mum loved Keira Knightley. She called her ‘the English Rose’. She missed her mum, she hadn’t spoken to her in ages – both busy with their lives, living far away. Now, whenever she called, they ran out of things to talk about beyond the usual life updates. Once upon a time, they’d spoken for hours – about everything and anything.

  Life of Pi – the one with the special-effects tiger. She’d seen it in the cinema, in 3D. A date, again. A better one, the guy was her guy now. But she couldn’t wait until Samuel was old enough to watch it with her – he loved tigers. He would love that film. And the little boy, Pi, she imagined Samuel might look a bit like him when he grew up.

  She didn’t know all the other titles, but she brushed her hand down the list, securing it in place, as Samuel pulled at her free hand. These titles, they pulled her away from the person she was right now, back to a previous Gigi. Those films she’d seen on dates – that was her go-to date night. She hadn’t seen a film in the cinema for ages now. Samuel didn’t have the attention span for it, not just yet.

  She missed it; she missed sitting in those fluffy, worn cinema chairs, eating popcorn, with either her mum or a guy beside her. She missed that feeling, as the lights went dark and the credits started to roll. If it was something she loved so much, why hadn’t she done something about it?

  ‘Mumma, I want gwape.’ Samuel’s voice pulled her back to the present.

  ‘Yes, sweetie, we’ll get them. Just putting this up for someone who lost it.’

  ‘It’s mine!’

  ‘It’s not yours, but you nicely found it for them. Isn’t that nice of you?’

  ‘Mine!’

  ‘Okay, come on then, let’s get some grapes.’

  But, just as Gigi turned around, she pulled out her phone and took a quick snapshot of the list. She would call her mum, her mum knew everything – she’d know every title, every film, every book. Maybe they could go see some of these together. To make up for lost time.

  Chapter 18

  MUKESH

  ‘WHY DON’T YOU TAKE her somewhere outside of Wembley for once?’ Aleisha said politely as Mukesh sat in his favourite library armchair.

  ‘I never take Priya outside of Wembley. Why would I?’

>   Mukesh had asked Aleisha for advice about bonding with Priya – she was the only young person he knew, so he thought she might understand Priya better than he did. But he was now starting to regret bringing the topic up at all.

  ‘Because she’s a kid. When I was her age, I was always out, on the road playing or something. Being at home is boring.’

  ‘You don’t find home boring. You’re always at home! Or here!’

  ‘Ouch, Mr P. You know, that kinda hurts.’ Aleisha held her hand up in front of her face and turned to the side, as if upset.

  ‘Have I really offended you?’ he asked, panicked.

  ‘No! Mr P, I’m kidding. But you know, I don’t always want to be at home.’

  ‘Why not? Home is nice. Especially as you have your family.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’ He saw her eyes drift away for a moment. ‘Well, family’s not always easy. My mum, she’s sometimes … you see, she’s not very well.’

  ‘What do you mean? Naina always told me to take my vitamin C and zinc tablets. I would recommend.’

  ‘No, not that. Sorry … I never talk about this, to anyone.’ She looked at her hands, anywhere but at him. ‘Just, she doesn’t look after herself, so I have to do it for her. Since my dad went to live somewhere else, me and Aidan are all she has.’

  Mukesh was silent; he didn’t know what to say.

  She’d never spoken about her father before. He’d never come up, not when they’d spoken about Scout and Jem’s father, nor Amir’s father.

  He wracked his brain for words of comfort. Naina would know exactly what to say. He kept as quiet as possible, hoping she might come to his rescue – but it had been weeks since he’d last heard her voice. He was on his own here.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Mukesh admitted, finally. ‘So you don’t like being at home? But you don’t like being in the library either?’

  ‘I don’t mind the library now. It’s all right.’